Not all show cars are vaporware and not all boutique supercars are merely dreams. Spania's GTA Spano is a good case in point. It's got looks, it's got performance, it's got an in-house V10 engine and it's got a prominent place at this year's Geneva Motor Show. Most importantly, it has an undeniable solidity to it that says anything but "vaporware".
In the lead up to Geneva, Spania teased the automotive world with some brief specs and enticing images of its new model. Fan-dance PR moves like that are a time honored tradition in the automotive world, and we all take them with a bit of salt. Car companies can promise a lot, but delivering on those promises can be a difficult hurdle to jump.
Spania, on the other hand, has seemingly cleared them with ease with its new GTA Spano. In many ways, the GTA Spano has all of the requisite bits and bobs a 2015 supercar requires – it seats only two, the engine is in the middle, it looks like a race car, the bodywork and aero attachments are there for performance and not just looks. In 1965, this would have been earth-shaking, but in 2015, that's what people expect from a top of the line supercar.
Apart from the utterly bizarre Tramontana, Spain has not been known as a supercar-producing country since the days of the Hispano-Suiza or Pegaso. Yet, here sits the GTA Spano, and like it's fraternal predecessors from the 1930s, the GTA Spano is not to be taken lightly.
Consider the engine. The GTA Spano has its own new V10 twin turbo plant that was designed and built in house. That's no small engineering feat, and Spania seems to have pulled it off with great aplomb. The engine displaces just under 8 liters (7,990 cc's to be exact), so it's not some diminutive hair drier with pretensions. The engine cranks out 925 hp (690 kW) and 1,220 Nm (900 ft-lb) of torque, which isn't that far off from an ocean going tug. That's more power and torque than an F1 car, an Indycar, a NASCAR stocker and an Australian V8 Supercar. Unlike those, however, the GTA Spano can be driven on everyday roads.
All that power and grunt is transferred to terra firma through a newly designed sequential 7-speed gearbox. With this all-new powertrain, the Spanish supercar accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 2.9 seconds and has a top speed of over 370 km/h (230 mph), which means this thing will only be topped by a couple of Veyron variants, a McLaren F1 and a Koenigsegg Agera R.
Heady and rare territory indeed. And speaking of rare, the GTA Spano maintains its exclusivity with a limited production run of only 99 vehicles. Sadly, you will most likely not get to see this beast very often.
The engine is not the only fascinating thing about the GTA Spano, the chassis is a bit strange in materials yet also interesting. Spania GTA developed an all new carbon monocoque chassis that is the only one of its kind among all the supercar manufacturers. The chassis of the GTA Spano is built up from titanium and graphene and the company claims it is the best in terms of rigidity and lightness.
This unique and high tech chassis was the product of a collaboration between Spania GTA and Graphenano, a top Spanish company in the production of graphene. Spania not only looks upon its new supercar baby as a go fast machine, it also looks on the GTA Spano as a rolling laboratory that is working to introduce graphene into the automobile sector. So graphene is not only found in the chassis, but also in the bodywork and leather upholstery as well. Both Spanish companies are researching ways to introduce graphene for other uses.
The GTA Spano is also a very distinctive looking automobile. The company says that the "GTA Spano maintains the lines that identify the Spanish brand, with marked personality and exclusivity." We'll buy that. With the ovoid swoop encircling the butterfly-hinged doors, it will be hard to mistake it for another car.
Only newly minted, the GTA Spano has not hit the streets yet, but it will be interesting to see how it fares, not only against other boutique supercars like Koenigsegg or Gumpert, but also against mainstream supercar manufacturers, such as McLaren and Ferrari.
Source: Spania GTA
